DECODE
Understanding attention

The psychology of self-determination theory

In this chapter

The psychology of attention

Human motivation

A recipe for success

Meatballs sell furniture

Pictures speak 1,000 words

The persuasion game

Picture superiority effect

An unfair advantage

The psychology of attention

To really understand what causes us to sit up and pay attention, we must plunge headfirst into the world of psychology. There are many branches of psychological thought which can help us to understand the way humans make decisions, how we approach risk and how we manage complexity. But for the purposes of understanding attention, we will turn first to a psychological theory known as “self-determination theory”.

Self-determination theory (or SDT for short) was first proposed by Edward L. Deci and Richard Ryan in the mid-1980s and has seen a significant growth in interest over recent years as modern businesses look to understand how they can outcompete one another for a larger share of our attention.

SDT makes two key claims: firstly, that we pay greater attention and are more successful at activities we enjoy than those we are required to complete. And, secondly, that there is a reliable formula for ensuring an activity falls into the first of these two categories.

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Understanding human motivation

SDT proposes that any activity we undertake is motivated by either “intrinsic” or “extrinsic” reasons. An intrinsically motivated activity can be thought of as one we do for an inherent feeling of satisfaction, such as for fun or for a challenge. Extrinsically motivated activities, on the other hand, are things we do because of some external pressure or reward.

As an example, playing a musical instrument or taking part in sport will typically be intrinsically motivated activities, but completing your tax return or staying up till 3am cramming for a test are typically extrinsically motivated.

Time and again, research shows that we will persist for longer, perform better and remember more of the activities we undertake for intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivations. Or in simple terms, if we find inherent satisfaction in a task, we will put more into it and get more out of it. Surely then, if our goal as businesses is to attain and maintain attention in order to remain competitive in the modern world, we should be trying to provide our customers and prospects with intrinsically motivating experiences for them to take part in.

But how do we do that exactly?

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A recipe for success

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Meatballs are the best furniture seller

Most people are familiar with IKEA as the world’s largest furniture retailer, but did you know that they are also the world’s tenth-largest food retailer?

IKEA uses many psychological tricks to boost sales, including offering their world-famous meatballs at a strategic point during your shopping trip. They know that everything looks better after a good meal, so by making delicious and affordable meatballs available as part of your trip, they can increase the likelihood of you deciding that, on balance, that new sofa is probably a good idea after all.

IKEA is a master of using psychology like this, and there are many articles online for the curious to explore further.

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A picture speaks a thousand words

“A picture speaks a thousand words,” or so the saying goes. But is it actually true?

Consider that over 50% of your brain is directly or indirectly involved in processing visual information. That’s quite amazing when you consider all the things our brains do for us which aren’t visual – talking, thinking, breathing, listening, walking and all the other thousands of activities we undertake every day, and yet half of all our brainpower is spent on visuals.

In fact, scientists believe that our brain is so hungry for visual processing power that we have irreversibly cannibalized the power of some of our other senses (most notably, our sense of smell) to specialize more on visuals.

It shouldn’t be too surprising to us, then, that visuals play a huge role in capturing and keeping our attention.

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The persuasion game

#1 Autonomy – we want to be in control of the outcomes we achieve. An intrinsically motivating experience needs to provide us with the ability to make our own choices, take our own path and be in control of our situation. Studies have shown that simply increasing the range of choices available to us in an activity increases our sense of intrinsic motivation, while creating artificial inhibitors of choice, such as deadlines, markedly decreases this sense.

If we take the example of someone learning the piano, this could be achieved by getting the student to determine which pieces to learn and in which order, rather than mandating them from a book.

#2 Competence – we want to feel that we have achieved some level of mastery over our situation.

It’s not enough to provide someone with a trivial, passive experience and expect them to feel motivated to complete it – there needs to be an element of challenge and the ability for us to overcome it if we are to feel intrinsically motivated to complete an activity.

In our example of learning the piano, this will be achieved through the improvement in muscle memory and dexterity over time, allowing us to play previously unplayable pieces.

#3 Relatedness – we want to be treated as an individual and either receive something specially tailored just for us or else be able to input our views and opinions into the activity in some way. In our piano example, this could be achieved by putting our own spin on the pieces we learn through improvisation.

These three key principles of intrinsically motivating activities provide a powerful framework for designing experiences that will capture and maintain the attention of our audiences. Used properly, they’re the “secret sauce” which allows us an unfair advantage in the battle for audience attention. But what else can psychology tell us about attention and engagement? What other principles exist to help us win this battle?

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The persuasion game

In the late 1970s, 3M conducted a study into the effects of using imagery in the context of a presentation. They took the same basic narrative, and then prepared two different slide decks: one which just used text on the screen and one which enhanced this with images.

The two decks were then shown to different audiences who were interviewed after the presentation to record their reactions. To say the results of the AB test were amazing would be an understatement.

The group who saw the image-enhanced version said that the presentation was more concise, clear, data-evidenced, professional, interesting, and – crucially – 43% more persuasive as measured by their desire to pay to hear more about the subject under discussion.

Just think about that for a second – the same message, the same narrative, and the same presenter. But, through careful use of imagery, a 43% increase in persuasive power.

But the power of images extends even further than this.

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The picture superiority effect

If you’ve ever been struggling to remember a lot of information, you may have come across various memory techniques involving images. These typically involve making up a visual story that relates to the information you’re trying to remember and then retelling this to yourself whenever you need to recall the data. Funnily enough, this is known as the “Memory Palace” technique and is used by top competitive memory champions (yes, that is a real thing).

So, does this actually work? And if so, why?

The first of the questions is easier to answer. Yes, it does appear that imagery is a very powerful route to memory and recall.

For example, a study looked at the effect in the context of reading. Two versions of the same article were prepared – one which was just the text, and one which used contextual images in addition to the words. The two different versions were shown to two different groups to read, and three days later the participants were quizzed on what they could remember.

Again, the results of this AB test were incredible. The group who saw the text-only version could accurately recall around 10% of the detail from the article, but the image-enhanced readers increased this to over 50%.

So – why does this happen? Honestly, we don’t know for certain. There are various competing theories, but the general consensus seems to be that our brain finds it easier to encode images into memory than words alone. Certainly, when we remember just how much of our brainpower is used on image processing, this would make intuitive sense at least.

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An unfair advantage

We could explore psychology for days on end, unearthing every possible source of advantage – but what we’ve covered already should be more than enough to start proving definite improvements in attention if we can successfully implement it in our interactions with customers.

So, let’s turn our own attention in that direction.

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